


If Only

by ThePreciousHeart



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: (it gave ME feels anyway), Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet Ending, Fandom Specific Plot, Gen, Introspection, Memory Alteration, Post-Movie(s), Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3345596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePreciousHeart/pseuds/ThePreciousHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marty is dealing with the sudden changes brought about by his adventures through time when he is approached by the last person he expected, or really wanted, to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Only

**Author's Note:**

> Hello people,  
> I saw the Back to the Future trilogy over winter break. I loved it. Consequently, I started writing fic for it.  
> I know a plot like this has been done countless times by other writers, but it seems to be practically a requirement now. :P So here's my take on time-travel angst.

Friday

November 15th, 1985

6:00 PM

       Marty McFly had never been the type of person who was given over to introspection. It was the way he had been brought up- he liked action and things that moved quickly, such as his favorite childhood TV programs and the sports cars he coveted later in life. When life failed to provide him with luck, he rolled with the punches and moved on, refusing to get bogged down or brood for more than a few minutes. He wrote music based on how well it sounded, without a specific desire to communicate greater ideas and opinions, and generally only cracked books open when he was assigned to do so. For entertainment he relied on practicing his guitar, skateboarding aimlessly and learning tricks, and hanging out with friends and girlfriends. There may have been the capacity to go deeper, but Marty never explored it, preferring instead to stick with what he knew and was good at.

         However, all that had been before everything changed, before Marty had woken up in his bed, in his room, and everything had _seemed_ normal but really wasn’t, as evidenced when he came downstairs for breakfast. He had different parents, different siblings- well, not really _different_ per se, not like Jennifer’s mother, but the way they behaved and the way they treated him were so unlike what he was used to that for a while he had thought he was still dreaming. Surely these idealized caricatures of his family members were nothing more than that. But eventually it dawned on him that they were real, and he was stuck with them, and everything about this situation was his fault. Through unintentionally meddling with the fabric of time, he had improved his entire family’s lives, and it was _all his fault_.

       After a drastic, life-altering shift like that, Marty figured it was well within his rights to look inward, to puzzle out for himself where it all went wrong and why, even with the pleasant home life and the new car and the sudden popularity at school- “hey, Marty, could you introduce me to your dad? I love his short stories”- he was still improbably dissatisfied. Wasn’t this what he had always wanted? Wasn’t this everything he could have dreamed of? Hadn’t he longed for his father to grow a backbone and stand up for himself, for his mother to stop drinking and abandon her strict suspicions? Hadn’t he wished that Biff would lay off the family and stop terrorizing them, that he could take Jennifer out for a night without having to lie about who he was with and, better yet, that he had his own car to drive her down to the lake with? Yes, everything had been checked off the list, everything was here in this uncertain utopia and Marty felt logically that he couldn’t possibly want for anything- but he still did. He’d wanted it all, but not in this way. Not so easily, like the waving of a magic wand. It felt like he’d been denied the chance of working hard to achieve his goal, and now that he would never have to prove himself to anyone again, what was there to do in life?

       These questions might have made another kind of man pick up a pen and sort out the answers by hand, but apparently George McFly’s gift for writing had not been passed down to his youngest son. The only outlet Marty had was verbal communication, contact with his friends and family, and while this had always been a comfort in his original life, in this new life he knew if he was even able to open his mouth and spin a story about time-traveling DeLoreans and meeting his parents in the Fifties, his only reception would either be amazement that his imagination was just as good as his father’s, or, more likely, strange glances and slowly backing away. The one person with whom he would have felt comfortable opening up to had willingly severed all contact. Who knew where and when he was. Besides that, there was pretty Jennifer, but Marty wasn’t sure how much she knew and understood and didn’t want to bother her either way. He had envied her ever since returning from the Old West, for even after sitting in the DeLorean herself on the futuristic skyways, seeing her not-yet-existent children and coming face to face with another version of herself and witnessing Doc’s final message of parting on the time train, she had still somehow managed to convince herself that it was a dream. At the time she had asked Marty to tell her the whole story, but upon his refusal she hadn’t said another word about it. The note that she had stolen from the future had faded into an ordinary slip of paper, leaving no proof for her to hold onto. And Marty envied that.

       If only he could be like Jennifer and believe that the time-traveling adventures had all been a dream. Maybe then he would be able to submit to his new life without a care in the world. But his own mind, the memories inside of his head insisted that it hadn’t been. His family still looked at him funny if he didn’t pick up on a reference or if he expressed surprise at any change, but Marty remembered the original 1985 better than this strange new one and stuck with his gut instinct that told him it wasn’t supposed to be this way. There was hardly any physical evidence to believe in- the DeLorean was in scraps, Doc had escaped with the hoverboard, and the 2015 clothing had been left behind in 1955, possibly buried deep in a closet at Doc’s place now. All there was to suggest to Marty that he really had traveled through time was the photo of himself and Doc that had been taken in the Old West, which he had hidden in one of his dresser drawers and tried not to look at again, and of course what he knew of the other 1985, the one where he had come from and the one where he belonged.

       It had all been real- it had to have been real- but there were days when it felt like it hadn’t, and today was one of those days. After a particularly difficult day at school, where Marty felt like he hadn’t understood a word his friends were talking about and suffered the force of their “are you crazy?” expressions, he came home restless, wishing as usual that there was someone around who he could talk to. But there was no one around, even more so than usual- Dave and his father were still at work, his mother was out at god knows where (there was a note, but Marty didn’t bother to read it for fear that his disillusionment would increase), and Linda had probably accepted an offer from her friends to go hang out somewhere after school. She came home late quite often these days, and yet Lorraine never threw a fit over it, and in turn Linda never grew surly and had to have an explanation pried out of her. That was just another change that Marty felt he would never understand.

       Having an empty house bestowed on him was a privilege, but even as he walked through the door Marty felt immediately that he couldn’t stay there. Sooner or later the silence would be broken, and then it was all back to pretenses and smiles and nods when he didn’t understand something and pretending to fit right in with the family, and Marty was not in the mood to have that start again. As he lugged his backpack up to his room, it occurred to him that he should go out if he wanted to be alone, somewhere that he wouldn’t be easily recognized. And, Marty mused as he turned the doorknob and entered the comforting familiarity of his bedroom, if nothing he had done in 1955 had altered it in some way, he knew just the place to go. His mind made up, Marty threw his backpack on the floor beside his bed and then went to his closet, searching for something to wear over his usual layers of clothing. There were several nice new coats hanging up in the closet, but Marty went for his red down jacket, even as the ghostly voice rang out in his head- _“Get a load of this guy’s life preserver! Dork thinks he’s gonna drown!”_ It was always preferable to have those memories of his romp through time in his head than to be confronted by bafflement- _since when do I own clothes like this? Who bought it for me, or did I buy it myself?_

After writing a quick note, Marty left the house on his skateboard- of course his car would have gotten him there faster, but tonight he was in no hurry and wanted to feel the chill November air on his face as he skated, hoping it would clear his mind. Besides, nice as the car was, it was still another product of this different universe, and in Marty’s current headspace he didn’t want to be reminded that he didn’t belong here. (Or did he…?)

       He skated slowly and leisurely through Hill Valley, avoiding the public square in favor of lesser backroads. Just his luck that no one he knew spotted him or greeted him, roping him into a mundane conversation. Out here on the streets, riding alone, Marty could almost pretend that he had no responsibilities to this timeline, that maybe if he continued on he would reach another Hill Valley, and that one would feel like home. But he only entertained the delusion for a few minutes before the sign for his turning came up, and Marty skated freely down into Hill Valley Public Park, one of the few places in this entire town where a person could have their privacy.

       It was quite a relief to find that all of his memories of this place were intact. There was the jungle gym with all the kids playing on it, a favorite of Marty’s when he had been that small. There was the swingset that Linda had loved so much, and that Marty had pushed her off of, for which he was punished. There was the thick swathe of trees where teenagers went to make out and do drugs and the public turned a blind eye upon- Marty had been there with Jennifer once, although their time consisted of stumbling lost through the darkness rather than any salacious events. Neither of them were into getting wrecked with the stoners.

       Most pivotally in Marty’s life, there was the half-pipe that a few skaters were currently practicing on, the place where he had learned all of his best tricks. And perhaps most importantly, a little ways beyond that was the hill that overlooked the pond down below, and was the perfect spot to watch sunsets from. Not that Marty ever really had, but he had climbed the hill plenty of times and admired the view. When he was little, he had felt that he could see the entire world.

       It was to this hill Marty went, sliding his skateboard under his arm and trudging up through the grass. And as he walked, he relished each step. At least here, his memories were the same. Nothing had ever changed about this place, and it likely would never change until a long, long ways into the future… the year 2015, perhaps. At that thought, the air went out of Marty’s lungs like a balloon that just been blown up and released, and he grimaced as he got to the top of the hill and surveyed the area before plopping down in the green grass. After everything in time that he’d seen, he knew he’d never be able to look at a place or a person the same way again.

       The wind blew a little against Marty’s back, and he leaned back on his hands and sighed with it, gazing down at the ripples of the water below. What was that term Doc had used, way back when he was discussing what would happen to Jennifer and Einstein, stuck in that awful version of 1985… oh yes, the ripple effect. When time corrected itself, all accidental changes would be put to rights, leaving no trace of what once had been. Marty had seen this happen with his own eyes, watching first the family in his photograph fade out before having it happen to his own body. The same thing must have happened when this new 1985 was made, adjusting his family’s looks and attitudes and interests tremendously… but somehow Marty hadn’t been hit by it. Or at least, not hit as strongly.

       He almost wished he had been fundamentally changed, though it would probably have meant giving up a large part of the self he knew. At least there would be no confusion, no frustration… and no fear when he realized his memories weren’t as intact as they appeared to be. Yes, it was true that all he had left to remind him of the original 1985 where he had come from was his memories of that timeline. But sometimes on certain days- there never seemed to be a pattern, but it was occurring more and more frequently- those memories would present a curious divergence. Sometimes Marty felt like he remembered this new 1985, and was able to breeze through the day without wondering what the hell people were talking about. On those days he remembered everything that happened in the past, but thought very little about his original timeline. On days like today, though, it took him forever to catch up on what his family was talking about, and the only memories of 1985 were those of how it had been before. Day by day, the timelines shifted and rippled inside his head, and Marty was never sure which set of memories would be his.

       And this was why he wished he had just been upgraded into a new persona, because he couldn’t deal with having two sets of memories that were both correct.

       Pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, Marty gazed tranquilly across the park, noting that the sun was going to set soon. He’d have to be home before dark, but couldn’t bear to leave just yet. Thoughts tumbled through his head like the sifting of a colander, and one statement that almost escaped was _I wish- I wish I had someone to-_ But that thought was squashed immediately, because Marty knew now that he would never have someone to talk to, not after Doc had made a life for himself in 1885… He’d have to tough it out here alone, and hope that someday he’d wake up and all memories of the previous timeline were gone, banished from his head. But at the same time, did he really want to forget where he had come from?

         “I didn’t expect to find you here,” a voice suddenly spoke up from behind Marty, and he found himself lifting his head at the voice against all logic and reason.

         Sometimes Marty’s mind processed things more quickly than his body did, and so even as he reacted to the voice a variety of thoughts flashed through his mind. _No, this can’t be- but he must have come back- and I missed him- but it was his machine that ruined everything- I don’t want to talk to him._ However, by the time Marty reached that conclusion he had already gotten to his feet and spun around to find that he had correctly identified the owner of the voice. Just as suspected, Dr. Emmett Brown stood before him, garbed not in the 1885 period clothing that he had last been seen in, but in his usual 1985 clothing, plus the shades he had picked up in 2015. He pulled them off as Marty stared, offering a satisfied smile. “Happy to see me?”

       “…Doc,” Marty said weakly, blinking to see if this vision would disappear. It didn’t, and he was forced to believe that this really was his friend, his “partner in time” before him. Vaguely his stomach churned. “What- what brings you back here?! I thought you went off with Clara and- and the kids…”

       _The kids._ God, no wonder Jennifer had made herself believe that what she had seen was all a dream- both Jules and Verne Brown had looked about seven years old, hinting that Doc had spent at least ten years with Clara in the Old West. And that had meant that he must have decided to permanently reside there. And _that_ meant that by all leaps of logic, he shouldn’t be here right now talking to Marty, even if he had built a time train to visit different periods- he had chosen to start a family with Clara and live happily ever after. Marty had always assumed that his introduction to the time train would be the last he ever saw of his friend. But apparently Doc had instead decided he had the right to come pop in on Marty whenever he saw fit…

       It had been unbelievable to fit ten years into the space of one single day, but this stretched Marty’s brain entirely. He refused to accept it by any means.

       Before him, Doc appeared oblivious to Marty’s inner turmoil. He gave a quiet chuckle, and that should have thawed Marty out, but it didn’t. “We did go off. But we’re back now! I always intended to return, you know- if I was still alive at the time when my parents came over to America, it might have resulted in a paradox of cataclysmic proportions. Not to mention that Clara wasn’t supposed to exist anyway, having passed away much earlier in the original timeline of 1885. We had to return for the benefit of the space-time continuum!”

       “The space-time continuum?” Suddenly Marty was thrown off-balance, completely taken aback after what Doc had said. “So- so that’s it? You’re here to stay now?” Doc nodded, but Marty barely glanced at him before continuing. “Jesus, Doc, you’re talking about the space-time continuum after spending what, _ten years_ with Clara in the Old West?”

       “Eight years, to be precise,” Doc replied smoothly, showing no hint of being perturbed. “I had to, Marty. The construction of the time train took a lot longer than expected…”

       “But that couldn’t have been _all_ you were doing,” Marty insisted. Dimly he was aware that this was not the welcome Doc had expected to receive, that he was probably just as baffled by this chilly reception as Marty was baffled by Doc’s return itself, but a tidal wave of anger was starting to simmer inside him and he decide to let it chart its course. “You settled down and had kids, for crying out loud. I mean- Doc, you can’t just show up here in Hill Valley and tell me you’d only come back for the dog, but reappear after a month and announce you’re here to stay! It- it just doesn’t work like that!”

       “I thought I’d give you enough time to step back, take a break from all the time-traveling shenanigans,” Doc said, his face still calm and his voice even. He folded his arms across his chest, and Marty hung back and waited for further explanation. “If I had shown up again on the same day you returned- why, it would just be anticlimactic. You needed a break for a month to get settled in before I returned.”

       _A break to get settled in._ Marty almost wanted to laugh at that; settling in was exactly what he had been trying his hardest and failing to do. “Yeah, and look how _that_ turned out,” he snorted, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans and staring out at Doc from beneath his thicket of hair. “Oh right, you probably don’t know how it turned out. You’ve been traveling through time. For your information, I really haven’t been settling in here at all!” There was more, so much more that he could add, details of his struggle to accept the new 1985 teeming on the edge of his tongue, but Marty resisted the urge to lay all of his burdens on Doc. Even though he had been wishing just moments earlier that he had someone to talk to, now that Doc was here the time was too valuable to waste breath.

         He wondered, as he looked upon Doc now, what concept of time his friend now kept. How long had he and his family been traveling on the time train? It must have been long enough for him to begin to permanently see and think four-dimensionally. For Marty, it had been a month since he had seen Doc, but Doc could have decided to return to Hill Valley mere seconds after leaving it again. This was too much power for one person to wield… to show up at different points in time without considering the effect it would have on the people being visited…

       Doc sighed, letting his arms drop, and one hand reached up to smooth back his white hair. “I was afraid of this happening. Ever since I saw you leave in the DeLorean at Lone Pine Mall…”

     _Twin Pine,_ Marty wanted to say, but he knew such details would be irrelevant. There was a more pressing matter on hand at the moment. “What are you talking about, Doc?”

       “The ripple effect.” Doc peered down his nose to pierce Marty with the intensity of his eyes. “I was afraid you’d be immune to it. Another version of you, the version I first met and befriended, went back to 1955 on the night that you returned _from_ 1955, creating a stable time loop. Because your other self wasn’t present when you returned to 1985, the universe essentially replaced the you of this timeline with the current you, the one who’s standing before me now. As far as I can guess, you’re immune to being replaced by the ripple effect.”

       A chill went over Marty as this explanation was offered, and his palms began to sweat. Quickly he made fists of his hands and stared down at the ground, focusing on a nearby blade of grass that trembled in the breeze.

       “But- but Doc, you don’t understand,” he said, trying to find the words to describe everything that had happened in the month since he had last seen his friend. “I’m _not_ immune… I’ve changed, my family’s changed, every single goddamn thing has changed!” Yes, there was that anger again, boiling away through his bloodstream, and Marty welcomed it with open arms, a metallic taste coating his tongue as he spoke. Each word fell upon Doc’s ears like the crack of a whip. “You told me to destroy the DeLorean, but then you go and screw around in the time train for _fun?_ Listen, Doc, I know this whole mess is my fault-“ _God, do I ever know it’s my fault-_ “but it’s all because of your _fun_ that my whole family is different, and I feel like I should know them but I don’t, and every time I forget something they’re talking about they look at me like I belong in an asylum, and everyone’s treating me differently because Dad’s so popular and I feel like I should enjoy it but I keep thinking, what’s the catch, y’know? And Jennifer- oh god, Jennifer’s the same but she’s not, I remember her looking different, and her mom’s a completely different person who I’d never even met and Jen thought I was joking when I said I didn’t know her. And I keep- I keep having these memories, Doc, of things that I remember happening but I don’t, I really don’t, like they were a dream I had but everyone around me seems to think it’s real. And sometimes, I really can’t tell if I made the whole thing up, or- or-“

       All of a sudden his voice was wavering hysterically- shit, that wasn’t good. Still staring at the ground, Marty took in a few deep breaths to try to calm down, but just as he did so a memory hit him right in the stomach, the first divergent memory that he’d had all day. There was Doc’s house, and there he was staring up in wonder at all the inventions, and there was the easy chair that he had crouched behind in order to hide his presence from Dr. Brown, mad scientist- but at the same time, there was the old weirdo on his doorstep who was promising him nice things in exchange for service, the same old weirdo who stood before him now, who had become his best friend.

       “Jesus,” Marty blurted, and his voice was strained. “I can’t even remember how I met you…”

       Silence filled up the space between them, the blades of grass underfoot absorbing every last word. Now that it had all been said, Marty didn’t dare look at Doc, for fear of his friend’s and his own reaction. Already his throat was tightening around a large and painful lump, and he gritted his teeth as the ground blurred in his vision. _Perfect._

“Marty,” Doc finally said, gently. “Perhaps it’s time we left the park.” Out of the corner of his eye, Marty saw Doc beckon him forward, and he followed him with no hesitation, still keeping his eyes fixed firmly below as they began the downwards trek.

       As they walked together, side by side but keeping their distance, Doc spoke to Marty in an encouraging voice, presumably trying to comfort him with his version of events. “The first time I met you was in 1955, but I had to wait thirty years before you could meet me. I went to your house and introduced myself, offered you a job and free beer and a record collection. I had to do it, Marty, because if we hadn’t become friends then you would have never been sent back in time in the first place.” He fell silent, and Marty nodded without looking at him, warm, unwanted tears starting to soak his face.

       _Never been sent back in time in the first place…_ Screw any paradoxes, right now it sounded like the best thing that could have happened to Marty. Anything would be preferable to the mess he was stuck in now, caught between two sets of memories without ever knowing which was the real one. There was nothing he wanted more right then than to tell Doc that his story wasn’t true, that wasn’t the way it had happened. He’d met Doc at his place, when he had snuck in there to prove himself as a freshman, not because he had accepted a job offer. Doc hadn’t been the one to take the initiative, initially… but in this universe he had, and that was what killed Marty more than anything else. By going back in time, he had ended up engineering their friendship. No more was there anything organic about it, and Doc didn’t remember it ever being any different. The whole time they had worked alongside each other in the Old West, Marty had unknowingly been interacting with a different Doc.

       He tried his best to stay silent and still as they trudged down from the hill, but somehow Doc must have sensed Marty’s distress, because he drew closer and extended a hand, patting him twice on the upper back. This only made it harder for Marty to choke back his sobs. It wasn’t _fair_ what had happened in this universe, that Doc should still treat him as his best friend when their friendship had been predicted from day one. For a moment he thought of that brief glimpse he had had of himself at Twin Pine- no, Lone Pine Mall, his terror-stricken face running for the DeLorean, and instantly wished with his entire being that he could become that Marty now. Yes, he would be losing a vital part of himself, but if only he could slide right into place in this universe like a missing puzzle piece, if only his new memories weren’t flawed and he wasn’t troubled by two separate accounts of events from his past…

       “I’m sorry, Doc,” he said when he was finally able to speak again, and his voice was rough from the suppressed tears. Doc only shook his head, dismissing him- “There’s nothing to apologize for.” Little did he know that Marty was referring to what he had accidentally done to their friendship, and not the way he had let his emotions overwhelm him.

       If only the time traveling had stopped after Marty’s first trip to 1955. If only he hadn’t bought that damn sports almanac. If only Doc had never come up with the idea for the flux capacitor in the first place… but there were too many “if only’s,” and so Marty was forced to accept his existence for now, and welcome Doc back into his life. He glanced over at Doc and caught his eye, smiling weakly. “Y’know, Doc, it’s really good to have you back.”

         “It’s good to be back, Marty,” Doc replied, his face dissolving into an expression of warmth, and Marty took a deep, steadying breath before nodding in return. Together they continued on into the setting sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-reading this, I realized some of my logic on the mechanics of time-traveling was flawed. Specifically about why Doc felt he had to return. But hey, I needed a reason other than the thought of him never reuniting with Marty makes me sad.  
> Also, I intended their conversation to last longer, but the characters had other ideas when I was writing. It still feels like it needs something, though... suggestions?


End file.
